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'hat is your Legion? 

Oraoe Fallow Norton 



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WHAT IS YOUR LEGION? 



WHAT IS YOUR LEGION? 



BY 



GRACE FALLOW NORTON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1916 



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COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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MAY 12 1916 

©CI.A428955 



CONTENTS 

O SAY, WHAT IS YOUR LEGION ? I 

PLEADING NOT FOR WAR ONLY THAT WE BE 

HEARD 3 

O COME TO THE DOOR OF YOUR HEART 5 

THE REASON 8 

WHEN LAFAYETTE CAME lO 

MESSENGERS I I 

A MESSAGE, ONE ONLY I 3 

AMERICA 1823 14 

OUR LIBERTY I 6 

PRICE AND PRIZE 18 

THE BLUNDERS AND THE FAULTS I 9 

GERMANY I 848 21 

BLOOD AND IRON 24 

FRANCE AND ENGLAND 26 

VAST RUSSIA 27 

WOUNDED 28 

OLD KINGS 30 

OF SHIPS AND THE SEA 3 I 

THE WORD WE REFUSE 32 

THE LITTLE LANDS 36 

THIS BOOK 38 



O SAY, WHAT IS YOUR LEGION? 

My people, O my people, dwelling far and free ! 
Distance is your fortress, distance and the sea ! 

The sea spreads its waters — your thought fares forth 

and drowns. 
And your memory of the old world and its burning 

towns. 

Distance spreads its safety — your fear flares out and 

fades. 
And you turn to your towns, your trains, and your 

trades. 

My people, O my people, crying I come to you! 
Nameless, a sign, a signal, — O listen! — and a clue! 

For I come with songs, with prayers! With silence 

in my voice ! 
The hosts of fate are battling! The world makes its 

choice ! 

Drown not, drown not now, your souls in the safe sea ! 
Drown not your mighty love nor your old victory! 

Once we went singing, singing, singing ^^ Liberty !'' 

[ > ] 



O SAY, WHAT IS YOUR LEGION? 

Once we were godlike, chosen ! My people, sing 

again ! 
The old-world towns are burning. Their women 

stand. Their men 

Stand and choose their legion, they rise and choose 

their life! 
They march to terrible music, the music of the fife! 

My people, O my people, whose towns the sea has 

spared, 
O say, what is your legion? How has your legion 

fared ? 

And the music of your marching, — is your music 

surging shrill 
Where the world rocks and shivers, uttering its will ? 

My land, eyrie of eagles whose wings beat by the 

sea ! 
When shall we cry to Belgium, " Our hearts are with 

you — free!"? 



[^] 



PLEADING NOT FOR WAR — ONLY THAT 
WE BE HEARD 

Give me words as clear as water, clear as light. 
That I may plead the better for a Word ! 
Pleading not for war — only that we be heard. 
O I would make you miserable and break your sleep 
at night ! 

Not so far from Belgium but we may hear her 

cry. 
Or Germany but we must know her voice ! 
So if we do not answer it is because we lie. 
Telling our false hearts falsely that we — the Free! 

— can make no choice! 

When shall we melt and glow ? America ! Soul of 

light ! 
How can we live, so dumb, so hard, so shallow ? 
When shall a land speak out as a man would speak 

for right. 
Who says: "This is my faith! Let lightning fall and 

the heavens follow ! " ? 
[3 ] 



PLEADING NOT FOR WAR 

O not so far from France but cry and counter-cry 
Float through our windows ! Yet we Hft no voice ! 
But if we do not speak it is because we die — 
Surely the soul of man is dead when it can make no 
choice ! 



[4] 



O COME TO THE DOOR OF YOUR 
HEART 

O COME to the door of your heart! 
Your servants would send me away; 
They say you are sitting apart, 
Counting your gold all the day. 
They say your tills overflow, 
That your bright gold rings and chimes, - 
That its chiming covers so 
The din of these warring times ! 

O come to the door of your heart! 
Your servants would send me away ; 
They say you are sitting apart 
In the pride of your peace all the day. 
They say you are praising your peace 
And that something within you has died, 
For your soul is seeking its ease 
And your body is satisfied. 

O come to the door of your heart! 
Your servants would send me away; 

[5] 



O COME TO THE DOOR OF YOUR HEART 

They say you are sitting apart. 

Shaken with fear all the day. 

Your fear is a terrible fear — 

The fear of the face of the brute ! 

(Well it might show itself here 

Where the pride of your peace has root !) 

come to the door of your heart ! 

1 will knock there day by day, 
For I know that you suffer apart. 
Silent and sealed away. 

I know you are stifled and sick 
And you say you will not be well 
While on far plains falling thick. 
Rain bitter bullet and shell. 

O come to the door of your heart ! 
For I know when you come you will say, 
** I have seen here — sitting apart — 
The truth at last and the way ! 
The pride of my peace has failed, 
And my dread of the brute has died. 
Yea, fear itself has quailed — 
For my soul is unsatisfied ! 

"I stand in the door of my heart — 
True Peace has been long away ! 

[6] 



O COME TO THE DOOR OF YOUR HEART 

I am wounded, sitting apart, 

So far from the worth of the day. 

I will speak out at last and be whole ! 

My silence was all a lie ! 

For freedom I'll pour out my soul — 

My body may live or die ! '* 



[7] 



THE REASON 

O I WILL tell you why in due season ! 
France ! France ! France is the reason ! 

For there the people, beating like surf against the 
prison wall, 

Razed the Bastille, and hearing the prison fall. 

Surged to the palace-gates, broke through, pulled 
down 

The throne and took the crown 

And crowned themselves and made a great democ- 
racy ! 
" Liberty ! 

Equality ! 

Fraternity ! " 

King Gold disturbs that equal brotherhood? 
They struggled on through tears and blood ! 
They fell, they rose, they reach unto their star ! 
Republican, they hold the key 
Of their own destiny ! 

And now, invaded, anguished, worn by war, 
France shows the world what kings her kingless 
brothers are ! 

[ 8] 



THE REASON 

O Washington, who came to you, who gave to 
you his hand ? 

Lafayette ! But saved at last, a proud and power- 
ful land, 

We bring no banner, nor send the old cry ringing 
across the sea — 
*' Liberty ! 

Equality ! 

Fraternity ! " 

Does gold disturb our true democracy ? 

Daily I ask myself, " What then is treason ? " 
France I France ! France is the reason ! 



[9] 



WHEN LAFAYETTE CAME 

When Lafayette came, 
There was a crown in France. 
But he was afire with the flame 
That burned up the throne of France! 

When Lafayette fought, 

He gave us part of F'rance. 

His part was the fearless thought. 

The great hope in the heart of France ! 



[ 'O] 



MESSENGERS 

In Washington, high, pillared, proud. 

With its great gray dome 
Like a swimming summer cloud. 

Stands our country's home. 

And there we send our messengers 
And there they rise and say, 
" Red fire sweeps the mountain-firs 
And burns them all away; 

" And the mountain-springs are drying 
And the valley-wheat will waste. 
And your messenger comes crying 
* Protect the springs ! Make haste ! ' " 

Daily each messenger returns 
But none has said to-day, 
" Red fire across America burns 
And eats her life away, 

" And her soul's springs are drying 
Of a strange, silent drought, 

[ " ] 



MESSENGERS 

And your messenger comes crying 
That the springs may gush out." 

O many many messengers 

Have come, but none to say, 
"The soul of America, stifling, stirs! 
Quench the strange fire to-day, 

" Or light great fires will meet that fire — 
Send clear and cleansing flame 
High into the heavy air. 

And free each healing stream ! '* 

O many messengers have come 
Nor yet are the springs released ; 

The drought that kills us here at home — 
Not yet has that drought ceased. 



[ 12] 



A MESSAGE, ONE ONLY 

I AM no messenger, chosen, signed ; 

I must choose myself with my lone mind. 

I stand on the street-corner, lonely. 

But I have a message, one only. 

And I have one question, only one. 

Weighing in my heart like stone. 

My message runs : We stand for nought 
While the great battle of liberty is fought. 
While men and boys, beside a crimson sea. 
Die for a dream of freedom and democracy. 
Or for an armed and iron monarchy ! 

My question weighs within my heart like stone : 
Why has no word been spoken, not one, not one ? 
Why has none risen like Webster in Washington ? 



[ '3 ] 



AMERICA — i823 

In Eighteen-Twenty-Three Greece bled, 
And one day Webster stood in our Senate and said : 
" A little land, a beloved land, struggles to free 
Her fields from Turkish tyranny. 
Her people send the world a prayer. 
Dark with their hearts' despair. 
I come to plead that the nation speak! 
Shall we not answer when a land still weak 
Seeks strength in freedom? Shall Greece fade for- 
ever, 
And we, her eternal debtor, her learner, freedom's 

lover. 
Be dumb, while Europe's ancient thrones cry out 
They are threatened by the rags and rout 
Of those who, dreaming, dream democracy ? 
So young in freedom yet, we too are weak. 
But I say we owe it to our souls to speak ! 
* Words were a danger ? Silence were best ? ' 
I say speech suits our higher interest. 
For we are pledged to life and liberty ! 
But if we dream kings on their carven thrones 
Have rights divine to crush men with their crowns, 

[ h] . 



AMERICA— 1 823 

And if we deem plain men unfit 

To speak in Europe's courts, then — and then only — 

we should sit 
Regardless. True, we are 
Not armed, we have no wish for war. 
But we have words ! O wonder of a word 
And power ! By all the future to be heard 
And by a world, torn, burdened, and at strife — 
If we speak truth and strength, if we speak life ! " 

O young we were in freedom then and weak. 
But the world, the future, heard us speak ! 
The words of Webster rang through Europe's strife. 
For he spoke truth and strength, for he spoke life ! 



[ '5] 



OUR LIBERTY 

Think of man still unborn, 

Part of a herd, held to the herd. 

Swayed by the herd, his Self unstirred. 

Then his Self sees faint morn ! 

Clansman, comrade now, by the choice of his heart. 

No longer now an inarticulate part. 

He bends not to his herd, he bows not to his clan. 

He has been born at last, he stands alone, a man ! 

He stands, he learns, he lives ! He strives with other 

men ! 
He bows not to the state — he is its citizen. 
He bows not to the state, he crawls not to the 

king. 
His friendship and his fellowship are a kingly 

thing. 
He gropes, he struggles on, seeking to wrest a soul 
From the blind great Whole, 
From its dark ancient terrible control. 

America, America, what is our liberty ? 
A fellowship of men, brotherly but free ! 

[ i6] 



OUR LIBERTY 

Who know this secret of the soul — that it must give 
From its lone light and vision if it would grow and 

live. 
A friendship, a fellowship, of strong men and free! 
Columbia, America, this is our liberty ! 



[ 17] 



PRICE AND PRIZE 

Our freedom was not conquered once for aye ; 

Our freedom must be moulded every day ! 

O not an ancient war to wrest us from a king, 

But a war to-day, to-morrow — immortal, elusive, 

a-wing ! 
A war with the world's fierce powers — 
Shall our souls win ? 
A war with the soul's strange fires — 
War! War! Without, within! 
A dream, ay, and a danger ! The risk that must be 

made 
Is ruin ! And a great price shall be paid — 
For the price is life, life ever, over and over and 

over I 
But life is the prize and life's love, and the joy and 

strength of the lover ! 



[ >8] 



THE BLUNDERS AND THE FAULTS 

O THE blunders of old England 

And the faults, the faults of France ! 

They are as faulty as we ! 

But there's hope for us, there's a chance, 

With our kind of liberty — 

The kind they have in England, 

The kind they have in France ! 

We speak out stubbornly. 

Without regard for majesty — 

Just as they do in England, 

Just as they do in France! 

O hardy human liberty — 

You were born in England, 

And you grew up in France ! 

O the faults, the faults of liberty 
And the hope and all the high glory ! 
They have fought for it in Russia, 
In the red streets of Russia, 
They have yearned for it in Russia, 
(My people, even as we!) 
[ -9] 



THE BLUNDERS AND THE FAULTS 

But they have not fought in Prussia, 
Not for years in Prussia, 
They do not dream in Prussia — 
Not yet — of liberty ! 



[.o] 



GERMANY— 1848 

Mourn ! Mourn for the dead year Forty-Eight ! 
Muffle the drums ! Toll bells ! March not, but 

mourn ! 
Pour ashes on bent heads ! 
Toll ! Wail ! Cry out for the great 
And tragic year that died ere it was born ! 
That died and brought no life, 
But only desolate hearths and beds. 
Empty places. 
Set white faces. 
Graves and fearful strife ! 

Mourn, mourn for your dead year, great Germany, 

Great Germany ! 

For your dark Forty-Eight ! 

Mourn for that dear lost year, so great. 

So brief, so black, so bright — 

When your soul yearned for liberty. 

When your sons sought the word that makes men 

free 
And met and spoke their faith together, 
Man by man, brother by brother, 

[.I ] 



GERMANY— 1848 

And dared hard deeds, stood forth — and failed ! — 

Dying, scattered, as the bullets hailed ! 

Mourn ! Weep and mourn ! Not for that fatal stand — 

The last within your land — 

But for the faith that died ! No flaming foreheads 

more arose — 
The gates of iron close 
Upon the hope of Germany ! 

Mourn, then ! Toll bells, cry out and weep. 

Because your people fell asleep 

Within a ring of magic fire . . . 

They dreamed behind dream-flames 

And built their world of dreams. 

O wail and rend your garments and call ! 

The wall of fire is an iron wall 

Raised by Bismarck's iron command ! 

Iron around a land ! 

And still, like children your people sleep. 

In dreams they arm, in dreams they weep. 

Stirred by the old desire. 

Murmuring " Liberty ! " 

Iron-armed, iron-burdened, dreaming, they rise and 

stagger — see — 
Then they strike outwards desperately. 



GERMANY— 1848 

O mourn ! Cry out ! Weep for the tragic, great. 

Dead, hapless, hopeless Forty-Eight ! 

Mourn not because your faith failed then ! 

Mourn only that it never rose again ! 

O mourn like eagles for the clipping of wings ! 

Mourn like lovers for the death of the dearest things ! 



[23] 



BLOOD AND IRON 

An iron land with an iron god 

And no faith in man save under an iron rod 

An iron land where iron rules, 

Welded into weapons and into mighty tools. 

An iron land with an iron will 

And iron wisdom. Powerful, ordered, still. 

Iron-minded, iron-handed. 

As iron Bismarck commanded. 

Printing his strength upon the state 

Whose soul had faltered after Forty-Eight. 

"With blood and iron! " stern Bismarck said, 

"Thus the minds of states are made ! " 

(" Liberty!" the patriots cried. 

For this their blood, for this they died!) 

** God-rights for kings ! " great Bismarck said. 

And so the iron God was made — 

Welded, weaponed, a monstrous creature. 

Iron of mind and iron of feature. 

Iron and blood! Iron and blood! 

Blood is its drink ! Bones are its food! 

[24] 



BLOOD AND IRON 

With iron rule and iron order 

It stalked across the Belgian border ! 

It spoke there with its iron tongue 

And the knell of the joy of the world was rung! 

Over the world every bell tolls; 

Iron has entered into men's souls! 



[^5] 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND 

They come with wounds and scars 

From wrongs and wrongful wars. 

Their hands not yet quite clean. 

Their houses not yet ordered, white — 

The houses that they build. 

And they come self-confessed, 

Uncovered, though their sins be seen. 

Knowing it is themselves they fight 

Always, on every battlefield. 

They come with scars. But O they come 

From chambers of free speech, the home 

Of liberty ! And self-scanned, self-confessed ! 

One is republican. The throne of the other 

Grows as light as a little feather. 

Her empire melts its bands 

And binds itself by the warm clasp of hands. 

They come with scars. But deeper than 
Their wounds are burned their words of faith 
Magna Charta is bread of one and breath. 
And one remembers still the Rights of Man ! 

[26] 



VAST RUSSIA 

She comes with wounds and scars 

From wrongs and wrongful wars. 

And burdened by her dire autocracy ! 

But her peasant soul so passionate, so brotherly, 

And her young noble students crying " Liberty ! " — 

Crying in prisons dark and vile, 

Crying on the cold plains of their exile. 

Crying in the mouth of death. 

Dying for their faith! 

Faithful they come, knowing no monarch stands 

alone. 
Knowing that throne must prop and lean on throne. 
Well knowing that the scepter of the Czar 
Was weighted — weighted with an iron bar! 



[^7] 



WOUNDED 

Great beauty falls upon our world to-day, 
White beauty of the snow, cloaking the meadow. 
The dark mountain, every branch and spray. 
In peaceful radiance without stain or shadow. 

And yet because of distant wounds, we see 
Red stains — a blot — another crimson blot! — 
Upon that breathless perfect purity. 
For we are wounded though we know it not. 

Our souls are bleeding unto death ! 
They falter ! They are faint for breath ! 
They got their wounds in valleys far away . . . 
They bleed upon the snow to-day 
Because our brothers lie upon the ground. 
Waiting with wounds unbound — 
The brothers of our souls whom we have never 
owned . . . 

The brothers of our souls ! Who are they ? When 
The cry is " Men or Kings ? " our brothers answer 
" Men ! " 

[28 ] 



WOUNDED 

The wounds of him who dares the battle 

Are not more deep 

Than his who hears the harness rattle. 

The horses neigh, and hears the deep 

Bells calling all night — calling — 

And hears the steady footsteps falling. 

And hears — " For liberty! " — the immortal cry! 

And hearing, turns with a sigh 

And puts his soul to sleep ! 



[^9] 



OLD KINGS 

I HEAR you laugh ! I hear you say, 

" What is this talk of kings ? 
I face a myriad task. My way 

Lies far from old dead things." 

Yet over the sea old kings live on 
Who break and change the hour. 

Clothed and armored as the dawn. 
Like young gods in their power. 

For over the sea the past has risen ! 

With ghostly flags unfurled. 
The Days of Old have burst from prison 

And clash upon the world ! 

O you, whose hopes and ardors burn 

For the myriad task to-day. 
Your forward-facing earth must turn — 

Fall back — make place — give way — 

Must halt and greet the sheeted past. 

Must answer ancient kings 
Who charge with a mighty thunder-blast, 

With hail, with fire, with wings! 

[30] 



OF SHIPS AND THE SEA 

Never again would I hear of ships ! 

The sea 's a snare of black water, 

Where we sink, we sink ! Our bright flag drips 

With brine of a horrible slaughter. 

Never again would I think of the sea ! 
Whose wife went down, whose daughter? 
We lose but few ! " And cautiously 
We turn away from the slaughter. 

(For that was a woman of Normandy, 
Or only Denmark's daughter. 
Or a child of Spain or of Italy, 
Drowned in the snarling water.) 

Nevermore need we speak of our dead. 
Under the closed black water . . . 
But we must tell how the bolts are sped 
And plead for any one's daughter. 

Lest we sink, we sink ! Under the sea. 
Dead beside Denmark's daughter. 
Dead by dead children from Italy» 
Our souls in the silent water ! 

[31 ] 



THE WORD WE REFUSE 

America ! Can you bend iron to your need, plung- 
ing it into the flame of your myriad forges, and when 
it is red as flame, glowing and most beautiful, bear- 
ing it to great anvils and smiting ? 

America ! Can you pierce mountains, or cast them 
down upon the plains, or stalk across their heaving 
shoulders to lay iron roads from ocean to ocean, 
where smoking engines of iron plunge and thunder 
on their way? Can you scoop deep caverns in the 
body of the earth, where miners will move with their 
little lamps, glimmering to and fro after gold and 
copper, coal and iron ? Can you send iron shafts 
towering to the clouds, high as the passage of eagles, 
and can you carry light on secret threads to illumine 
that utmost iron height ? And lead mighty motion 
in a little wire, to spin and to weave on gigantic 
groaning looms of iron, long webs to wind around 
the world ? 

America ! Can you pluck out the blind earth's 
secrets and weigh the heavy weight of the sea in 

[32] 



THE WORD WE REFUSE 

scales, and test in crucibles the substance of the heav- 
ens ? Feeling a lack, can you learn a new thing? Or, 
looking down into your manifold mind, can you 
bring a new thing to birth, bending steel and iron — 
and the stars — to your need? Can you accomplish 
these marvels, or do you fail? Are your eyes clouded ? 
Is your mind less than the mind of another? But 
above all, further than all, the iron of your mastery 

— does it master you ? Have you loves and dreams 
beyond the splendid pageant of your visible roads? 
And do you know the weight and worth and sub- 
stance of an idea ? Have you still a soul ? 

O speak ! Answer and tell that soul why then you 
are silent before the Iron Monster! For are you less 
than he, that you should worship him or bow before 
his towering height ? Or, towering also, and know- 
ing that you tower, do you feel strange secret kinship 
with him ? The iron that encases and curbs him, does 
it close upon you ? Have you too given a few princes 
undue power? Are you too loath — loath and unready 

— to free yourself? O what has your iron demanded 
of your soul? Wealth, arrogance of caste, submission, 
silence, the unbroken rule — do these grow dearer to 
you than speech and growth and change and the will- 
ingness, when the dividing hour and the demanding 

\.33l 1 



THE WORD WE REFUSE 

moment come, to break the law and cast it back 
within the furnace, and melt and hammer it out anew? 

Daily you choose, saying you choose not! Daily 
you choose, and by your silence you choose — Ger- 
many! The prayer of Belgium goes unanswered. . . . 
The invader deprives you now of speech, for he has 
ravaged the plains of your soul and holds its citadels. 
And his heel upon your heart is the secret love you 
bear him — your secret love for his great girth, his 
ruthless tread, his thundering voice, his monstrous 
appetite ! Love of the Word-breaker keeps you from 
the love that asks your word. And you are blinded 
to the despoiled fields, the land made desolate, and 
blotted for you is the voice of bondage. Alas, Amer- 
ica ! Yet neither can you thunder forth your iron 
affection I For in your heart there flutters forever a 
ragged bit of red — flag of those sorrowing great 
German exiles who came to you so long ago, who 
came to you for life and gave you life. . . . And in 
your heart there flutters forever a tattered tricolor — 
red and blue and white ! — flag of the First Republic 
— and of yours ! 

The soul withers in division. This silence leers, 
saying: "I crouch and wait to choose the victor!" 

[34] 



THE WORD WE REFUSE 

O false and evil choosing! For the soul's elect, 
though he bite the dust, and be stoned and dragged 
at chariot-wheels, and though he die a thousand 
deaths, still he lives, still he is victorious! But the 
idol, the master, though he triumph with all his 
horsemen and riders and his engines and his cannon, 
still, rejected by the soul, he fails! 

Iron to use you or iron to use ? 
For Belgium a word — to have or to lose ? 
What weight has a word — the word we refuse F 
A cross of iron is heavy ! Choose I 



[3J] 



THE LITTLE LANDS 

This is a black day for all the little lands and peoples, 
A day of charred fields, of pillaged farms, of fallen 

steeples. 
Belgium and Poland, alas ! What hope have they 

now? 
Their hope must all be broken like a broken plough. 

Their hearts must be like broken bowls. Yet no tears 

fall, 
For the tears they had for falling, by now they have 

shed them all. 
And half of them are dead now, under the heaving 

earth. 
And many of them wander since they were driven 

forth. 

And Serbia and Armenia ! What light have they 
To lead them out in darkness, weeping on their way ? 
There are no words to tell their grief. All grief they 

have. 
Their life has been a hard road to a stony grave. 

[36] 



THE LITTLE LANDS 

'T is a black day of destruction for all the little 

peoples. 
And false it seems to pray for them under safe white 

steeples ! 
If you have strength to pray for them, stand at last 

and seek. 
Praying your own heart only, for strength to speak, 

ay, to speak ! 



[37] 



THIS BOOK 

I SAW this book in a dream. 
I held it within my hands; 
The cover of it was red; 
I waited my soul's commands. 
Red is the color of blood. 
The color of brotherhood ; 
Red is the color of flame — 
I saw this book in a dream. 

I said, " If it is not true 
I must take my shears and cut 
Every false page out. 
Else it would be my shame! " 
But I looked and saw it was true 
And I knew what I must do. 
I saw it there in my dream; 
The cover of it was red. 
Red is the color of blood. 
The color of brotherhood; 
Red is the color of flame — 
I saw this book in a dream. 

THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
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